


Auld Acquaintance

by LydianNode



Category: Bohemian Rhapsody (Movie 2018), Queen (Band)
Genre: Gen, Language, Mourning, Paul tries to be helpful bless him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 08:25:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17240840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LydianNode/pseuds/LydianNode
Summary: John Deacon gets a visit on New Year's Eve.





	Auld Acquaintance

**Author's Note:**

> Clearly, this is a work of pure fiction. It's just something I keep hoping will happen before it's too late for them.

December 31, 2018

If John Deacon's neighbors were surprised to see Paul McCartney standing on his doorstep, they certainly didn't show it. Paul blew on his hands - he'd forgotten his gloves, again - and waited for someone to answer the door.

John had not wanted to see him. He was extremely clear on that point, but Paul had wheedled and needled and made enough of a pest of himself that he got his way in the end. Not that this would be an easy or convivial visit, but it needed to be done.

 _We miss him_ , Roger had told him over not a few drinks when they bumped into each other at a charity function the week before. Roger's hair had whitened and thinned, but the eyes were still startlingly, expressively blue, even when they misted over as Roger mourned the lost friendship.

If there was anyone on earth who understood what Roger was feeling, it was Paul. He didn't say anything, didn't make a promise he might not be able to keep, but he resolved to get in touch with Jim Beach and wrestle a phone number from him.

And here he was.

John opened the door. He'd aged so much that Paul would not have recognized him save for the peculiar squinty smile. "Thanks for seeing me," Paul said as he extended his hand.

For a moment John simply stared at it, then up at Paul again. "Whatever it is you want to tell me, come in and do it quickly. And wipe your feet," he added as he walked away.

Paul followed him into the house. It was unpretentious, with a comfortable feel to it that Paul recognized from the good years at High Park Farm. Photographs were on the walls and the mantelpieces, presumably of John's children.

There were no photographs of Queen. None of Roger, or Brian, or poor Freddie. 

This was going to be harder than he thought.

John waved Paul to an overstuffed armchair and took the seat opposite. "Which one of them put you up to it - Roger or Brian? I bet it was Brian."

"Uh, neither, actually." Paul shifted, found a hardbacked book under his bum, and pulled it out. He tried to read the title but without his glasses he was hopeless unless he put the book seven feet away. John grunted as he leaned forward, grabbed the book, and set it on the table between them. "This is just me. I wanted to see, you know, if I could explain something to you."

John's lips quirked upward. "Life lessons from a Beatle. Or a Wing. My day is complete."

Jesus, had he always been this much of an asshole? Paul remembered "Deacy" as a quiet, reserved man with a sense of humour and a low tolerance for stupidity. Rather like George. Down to the curmudgeonly tendencies, only John carried an extra helping of cruel sarcasm on top.

Lovely.

Paul sighed and scratched the side of his nose as he considered which tactic would be least likely to end in a fistfight. "I wouldn't intrude on your privacy for the world--"

"And yet, here you are."

"Yeah. And yet, here I am. Because I've been in your shoes and I've walked around in them for almost forty years, and I've learned a thing or two." John didn't say anything. He leaned back in his chair, steepled his fingers, and nodded.

Paul took a deep breath. "When the Beatles split up, I could hardly get out of bed in the mornings. Sometimes I didn't bother. It took years to pull myself back together. The we lost John, and it took even more years to mend fences with Ringo and George." He would have killed for a drink in this moment. "And if I hadn't, and if George had died still thinking I was the world's biggest prat..." He looked down at his fingers and back up again at John. "I wouldn't be here."

John blinked a few times. "This wasn't the same situation," he said evenly.

"Of course not, not entirely. But you lost someone irreplaceable and you thought, 'well, that's put paid to this band.' Then Brian and Roger wanted to keep recording using some tracks Freddie had done, then after that they wanted a concert, and then another album, and all the while you're wondering why they don't hurt the way you do."

There, that struck home. John's eyes widened and he lost the defensive, tight posture that made him look so threatening.

"Did you know that just before John died, he was preparing to come back to England? He wanted to see his family - and maybe try writing with me again. You understand how much that meant to me, because working with Freddie was just as important to you. Then this fucking wanker gunned him down! We never had a chance to say..." 

Shit. He stopped, breathless, as John simply watched him with those inscrutable grey eyes.

"George went slowly, like Freddie, and it hurt like hell to watch him become so...diminished. I'd known him most of my life, loved him like I love my brother Mike, and I watched him fade away just like Linda did." He turned the full force of his gaze on John. "I had to get on with it every time. The kids, and all."

"I've taken good care of my kids," John retorted, bristling. "Once I got off the insane merry-go-round of Queen and came home, they've not wanted for my company. Or my love."

"Of course!" Paul exclaimed. "But what I'm trying to say - and I'm doing a terrible job of it - is that people mourn differently. When John died, Ringo immediately flew to New York to be with Yoko and Sean. Now, George and I, we went to our studios and worked. Or tried to." He hadn't accomplished a single useful task the entire day, actually, and from all accounts George had spent his studio time drinking wine. "But when people say I was all cold and unaffected--"

"'It's a draaag," John quoted. 

Low blow.

"That was out of context and you know it!" Paul snapped before he was able to collect his thoughts, then he continued more calmly. "I'm not good at public mourning, I'll cop to that. But I have grieved for John. Every. Single. Day. It still eats me up inside that we were becoming so much closer after all the years apart, and it was snatched away from us."

"Freddie and I didn't fight like you and John, or you and George, for that matter." 

"Okay," Paul murmured. "I'd heard that you weren't...able to get to see him, near the end." He was being polite, of course, and he was prepared for John to go on the offensive.

"You heard wrong." John leaned forward in his chair, crossing his arms across his lap. He darted his glance away from Paul, toward something only he could see. "I could've gone. Dozens of times. But I didn't want to see him like that. I couldn't. The recording sessions were bad, and the videos were worse, and I just couldn't bring myself..."

Paul sucked in a long breath and gave John a few beats to recover. Bass players understand rhythm, after all.

"Brian got to say his goodbyes. Roger was on the way - he could see the fucking house, he was so close - when he got the call saying Freddie was gone, but he at least tried. Me, I just sat on my arse and waited for the..." He paused again, a tiny smile lifting corners of his mouth. "I waited for the hammer to fall."

Paul's heartbeat quickened in sympathy with the pain John was expressing. "It falls hard," he whispered. 

"That, it does." John sat up straight again, his gaze turning to the ceiling as he spoke about his memories. "It was a shitshow, you might recall, with the funeral and the tabloids going spare. I mean, Freddie had such an outrageous life - why bother making things up about him when reality was so much more colourful?" They looked at one another and shrugged. "It was right after the funeral, when I realized that they were burning him - my Freddie, OUR Freddie - that I came a little unglued. All I could think about was that there was so little of him left and they were reducing him to almost nothing. And with the ashes being hidden away, there wasn't even a place to mourn him, you know?"

Paul did. He'd felt the same way about John, and then his beloved Linda, and then George. Dispersed to the elements, they were free whilst Paul was chained to earth with only his memories.

Now that the floodgates were opened, John kept talking, faster and faster. "We'd never had even one discussion amongst us about what to do after Freddie died. The three of us standing around at the cemetery looked like three lost kids, and we were. No bloody idea how to go on. I'd always figured that Brian would have it sorted - he's the kind who would, the bossy bastard - but he's the one who ended up wanting to top himself. We waited for him to get better before we did much of anything with Freddie's demos. Then there was the concert, and I thought 'at last it's over' and suddenly there's Roger with 'just one more song, mate,' and at that point I couldn't bear to look at either one of them. So I walked away."

"Why?"

John's head snapped back and he gave Paul a filthy look. "What do you mean, why? So I could be a father, for a change. A husband, too. Ronnie's not like your Linda, she didn't want to be part of the entourage. So, I made a choice: to be there for her. Screw being a rock star - it didn't do anything for Freddie but kill him. I came home and kept my head down, and for the most part people have been respectful of my wish to disappear."

Sighing, Paul shifted in the chair until he didn't feel the nagging pain in his lower back anymore. "I respect that - no, I really mean it," he said when John rolled his eyes at him. "But to cut off these two men who loved you, who had been through things only the three of you were left to remember, John, you have to admit that's more than a little odd."

"Cut them off? I only wish I could. Every time I think Queen's finally buried, up pop Roger and Brian with another compliation album, a West End musical, even this bloody movie with some American kid playing me, can you believe it? And because Queen's business is divided four ways, I'm always involved." He paused, taking a shuddering breath. "They keep ripping the bandages off, again and again and again. I can't make them understand something so simple: how much it HURTS to be around them because it makes me think of Freddie!"

"I do understand," Paul said, gently. "But there's something more, isn't there?" John grimaced and shook his head. Paul leaned toward him, determined. "I've lived through this. I understand. John, I know. I know."

The colour drained from John's face. "If you're insinuating that Freddie and I--"

"Jesus! No!" Paul waved his hands as if to dispel that line of thought. "I'm talking about why it hurts so much to see them. Why it really does, not just because you miss Freddie." He caught John's eyes and nodded. "C'mon, John. You need to say it."

They stared at one another for what felt like forever.

"It's guilt." John's voice cracked, and for a horrible moment Paul thought he was going to cry. "I wasn't there for him, but they were."

There it was.

"You had him in here," Paul said, pointing to his heart. "You did what you could do. And you can live with that. You can. But pretending that none of this ever happened, that's not fair to any of you."

"I haven't seen either of them in about twenty years. That's as long as we were together." A spark of humour returned to John's face. "Twice what the Beatles managed, if memory serves."

Paul snickered. The pure cheek of this man - no wonder Roger and Brian had felt so bereft of his company. "All right, all right." 

"No offence, of course."

"None taken. I'm used to it." He paused, memories flooding him. "Our John had quite a tongue on him, you know."

A fleeting look of pain left a shadow on John's face. "Does it ever stop? The shock when you have a dream that you're all together, then you wake up and it's like losing them all over? The day-to-day stuff where you'd think, 'I need to tell George about this' only he's not there?"

"Truthfully?"

"Please."

"No. There's always that ache, that scar. But you learn how to manage it. Remembering the great times instead of stuffing them away, that's a good start." He stood up, using his arms to get himself out of the chair. "And it helps to talk to the other people who remember. Talk to them, because someday they won't be here anymore."

John rose as well, tentatively reaching out to shake Paul's hand. Paul grasped it, feeling the slight tremor in the fingers. "If I wanted--" John started, but he had to stop and breathe some more before he went on. "If I wanted to talk to...to the other people? What would I need to do?"

Grinning from ear to ear, Paul pulled a slip of paper out of his pocket and put it in John's hand. "That's the address of Roger's flat. I heard him say that he was having Brian and Anita over for New Year's Eve."

John gaped at him.

"His wife's name is Sarita. She's lovely, I know she'd be thrilled to have you join them." He straightened his shoulders. "Anyway. I've taken up too much of your time as it is."

"No, really--"

"And I'm at Stella's for a party tonight, so I really must dash." He cocked his head. "You'll think about what I said?"

Swallowing, John nodded. Paul turned and headed toward the front door. He had his hand on the doorknob when he heard John call out, "Happy New Year!"

"And to you." Paul pulled up the collar of his coat and faced the blustery winter wind.

***

John turned up the collar of his coat and faced the blustery winter wind. It had taken ages to find the flat - John couldn't remember ever being on this street - and it was a bit of a walk after he parked the car. He went up the stairs quickly, found the right buzzer, and pressed it before he had a chance to change his mind.

A woman's voice crackled over the intercom. "Yes?"

"It's me. Uh, John."

"John...?"

Screwing his eyes shut, he said "This is John Deacon."

She repeated his name in a disbelieving gasp, then the intercom went dead. John thought his heart was going to jump out of his chest. They didn't want him, it was a waste of time to come here, and fuck Paul McCartney, anyway. 

The bottle of champagne in his hand felt impossibly heavy. Why had he set himself up to get his heart broken all over again?

Seriously, fuck Paul McCartney.

As he reached for his car keys. he heard the clamour of excited voices on the other side of the door. When it was flung open, he found himself face-to-face with the only two men on earth who knew him down to the soul.

Brian's face was flushed but he seemed wary, hesitant. It was Roger who burst out onto the stoop and threw his arms around John. "Oh, God, Deacy!"

John patted him on the back, looking past to where two blonde women stood. "Hi, Anita," he called to one of them, and to the other he said, "You must be Sarita. I'm John."

Brian glanced at his wife, then came forward and extended his hand to John. "I'm Brian," he said, deadpan. His hair had gone white and his face was craggy now, but mischief still twinkled in his eyes, and the resurgence of love John felt for him was enough to take his breath away. "Roger, peel yourself off of John and get him a drink."

Roger's eyes were damp when he stepped back, his mouth still in an astonished "o" shape. "How did you--what made you--"

There would be time for explanations, later, but right now John was content to let his old, dear friends welcome him home at last.

**Author's Note:**

> I've started a Tumblr! Find me here: lydiannode.tumblr.com .


End file.
